1 SSH-ADD(1) OpenBSD Reference Manual SSH-ADD(1)
4 ssh-add - adds private key identities to the authentication agent
7 ssh-add [-cDdkLlXx] [-t life] [file ...]
12 ssh-add adds private key identities to the authentication agent,
13 ssh-agent(1). When run without arguments, it adds the files
14 ~/.ssh/id_rsa, ~/.ssh/id_dsa, ~/.ssh/id_ecdsa, ~/.ssh/id_ed25519 and
15 ~/.ssh/identity. After loading a private key, ssh-add will try to load
16 corresponding certificate information from the filename obtained by
17 appending -cert.pub to the name of the private key file. Alternative
18 file names can be given on the command line.
20 If any file requires a passphrase, ssh-add asks for the passphrase from
21 the user. The passphrase is read from the user's tty. ssh-add retries
22 the last passphrase if multiple identity files are given.
24 The authentication agent must be running and the SSH_AUTH_SOCK
25 environment variable must contain the name of its socket for ssh-add to
28 The options are as follows:
30 -c Indicates that added identities should be subject to confirmation
31 before being used for authentication. Confirmation is performed
32 by the SSH_ASKPASS program mentioned below. Successful
33 confirmation is signaled by a zero exit status from the
34 SSH_ASKPASS program, rather than text entered into the requester.
36 -D Deletes all identities from the agent.
38 -d Instead of adding identities, removes identities from the agent.
39 If ssh-add has been run without arguments, the keys for the
40 default identities and their corresponding certificates will be
41 removed. Otherwise, the argument list will be interpreted as a
42 list of paths to public key files to specify keys and
43 certificates to be removed from the agent. If no public key is
44 found at a given path, ssh-add will append .pub and retry.
47 Remove keys provided by the PKCS#11 shared library pkcs11.
49 -k When loading keys into or deleting keys from the agent, process
50 plain private keys only and skip certificates.
52 -L Lists public key parameters of all identities currently
53 represented by the agent.
55 -l Lists fingerprints of all identities currently represented by the
59 Add keys provided by the PKCS#11 shared library pkcs11.
62 Set a maximum lifetime when adding identities to an agent. The
63 lifetime may be specified in seconds or in a time format
64 specified in sshd_config(5).
68 -x Lock the agent with a password.
71 DISPLAY and SSH_ASKPASS
72 If ssh-add needs a passphrase, it will read the passphrase from
73 the current terminal if it was run from a terminal. If ssh-add
74 does not have a terminal associated with it but DISPLAY and
75 SSH_ASKPASS are set, it will execute the program specified by
76 SSH_ASKPASS and open an X11 window to read the passphrase. This
77 is particularly useful when calling ssh-add from a .xsession or
78 related script. (Note that on some machines it may be necessary
79 to redirect the input from /dev/null to make this work.)
82 Identifies the path of a UNIX-domain socket used to communicate
87 Contains the protocol version 1 RSA authentication identity of
91 Contains the protocol version 2 DSA authentication identity of
95 Contains the protocol version 2 ECDSA authentication identity of
99 Contains the protocol version 2 ED25519 authentication identity
103 Contains the protocol version 2 RSA authentication identity of
106 Identity files should not be readable by anyone but the user. Note that
107 ssh-add ignores identity files if they are accessible by others.
110 Exit status is 0 on success, 1 if the specified command fails, and 2 if
111 ssh-add is unable to contact the authentication agent.
114 ssh(1), ssh-agent(1), ssh-keygen(1), sshd(8)
117 OpenSSH is a derivative of the original and free ssh 1.2.12 release by
118 Tatu Ylonen. Aaron Campbell, Bob Beck, Markus Friedl, Niels Provos, Theo
119 de Raadt and Dug Song removed many bugs, re-added newer features and
120 created OpenSSH. Markus Friedl contributed the support for SSH protocol
121 versions 1.5 and 2.0.
123 OpenBSD 5.5 December 7, 2013 OpenBSD 5.5